The Mind of a Profiler
by Excellently-Elementary
Summary: "Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus." -Wallus Stegner. Various one-shots that give you a glimpse inside a profiler's life and mind. Chapter One: Piano.


**A/N: Good...morning? Yup, that seems about right. Okay, so I've noticed a lot of authors do this: they do, like, song-prompts and challenges and one-shots and stuff. So, I just decided to put all of those wonderful things I will be doing in the near future here! I also apologize for not uploading Hit and Run today. That one chapter is already up to about 5,000 words, so it will be a long one, and you guys can decide if it was worth the wait or not tomorrow. **

**Object/Prompt/Song: Piano.**

**Main Character: Spencer Reid.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.**

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**A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.**

**-Abraham Maslow**

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Spencer Reid has never played the piano before.

This was a fact.

But he has bled into one before, cried into one, yelled into one. That does not mean he has _played_ it.

Because when his fingers softly graze against the surface of the white keys, he feels something that he has not felt as often as he would have liked:

Peace. Serenity. Bliss, if you will.

That one moment when his mind just stopped, and all he could focus on was the pure keys transforming into different colors right before his eyes.

He focused on the smooth wood's soft touch, and forgot about the cold sensation that wrapped around his pointer finger as he stared down an UnSub. He listened to the beautiful melody with the shy harmony hiding behind it, and blocked out the victim's screams that would sometimes clash with his own as he awoke from yet another nightmare. He caressed the wood, breathed in the clear air and kept his fingers wandering around the keys, not entirely sure of what he was confessing to his safe haven tonight.

The case today had worn him down both physically and mentally. Kids were being kidnaped and then crudely dumped in the woods two days later, the once alive and youthful faces covered with dirt and blood. The first victim they had found after arriving in Altamonte Springs, Florida was just a four-year old boy. His jeans were tattered, one of his sneakers missing. His blonde hair lay limply in his face, never to brushed back on the first day of school by his mother, or ruffled affectionately by his father. And although the logical part of his brain told him that there was no distinct age where it would be acceptable, he could not help but think that this little boy was too young to die.

They had eventually connected the UnSub, Peter Carr, with a cabin in the woods, only a few miles away from all of the dump sites. He had been abused as a child, and soon after being released from jail for attempting to kidnap a ten-year old girl, found a job at a local day-care who apparently did not run background checks on their employees. Which gave Carr a lot of opportunities to watch the children play by themselves, play with one another, and interact with their parents once they came to pick them up.

Whenever Carr saw a child with a charming, toothless smile or an expensive back-back slung over their small shoulders, he would become jealous of the child's happy life and decide to show the child that there were, in fact, monsters in this world. Except instead of fangs, they had equally long knives and other instruments of torture.

When they asked him the significance of the two days, he shrugged and told them that [that] was all their "weak, pathetic bodies could take."

Reid had thought he actually heard Hotch growl from the inside the interrogation room before he got up, looking rather intimidating, and strode out of the room without another glance in Carr's direction.

The fly back to Quantico did not seem to last very long, but everyone got out immediately and, with Hotch's permission, headed home.

Looking down at the piano again, he admired its black beauty before changing the story a bit. He slowed down the intake of notes the air swallowed, bringing out his emotion to paint all over the blank keys.

And there he sat, on that small, wooden bench, for hours upon hours, his fingers not tiring the least bit.

The orangish-yellowish light coming from the large window directly facing in his direction ran slid up his house, enclosing the darkness and emitting a variety of colors.

Feeling his eyelids finally begin to droop, he carefully put the wood over the keys and lay his head down to rest, his dreams filled his a variety of notes and utter bliss.

Spencer Reid has never played the piano before.

That is still a fact.

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**As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.**

**-Georges Bizet**

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**Thanks for reading and reviews are greatly appreciated! **


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